Publisher: Out of the Box Publishing
Designer: Matt Nuccio
Year: 2011
Players: Three to seven players
Ages: 13+
Playing Time: 30 Minutes
Retail Price: $29.99
The latest party word game from Out of the Box, Faux-Cabulary features one thing that fans of dice games will love. Lots of big dice with parts of words on them.
There are 21 big dice to be exact. Each player gets a plastic cover and randomly pulls three dice out of the box (Ha! Pun intended). One of the players acts as the wordmeister, which means they read the card while the other players build the words. The wordmeister pulls a card out of the card tray and reads the definition on the card. The other players look at their dice and try to form a word that might fit the definition. When they have their words, they place the covers over them and slide them over to the wordmeister.
The wordmeister shuffles the covered words around so they can’t tell who made which word, then reveals them one by one. After reading all of the words, the wordmeister selects the one that they think best matched the definition on the card. The player who made the word collects the definition card. The definition tray then passes to the next player and they become the new wordmeister. The first player to collect a certain number of cards wins the game (depending upon the number of players).
So lets go over an example:
Tom pulls a card out of the box and reads the definition: An extremely Agile Fat person.
Eric grabs his three cubes from the box, spinning them about he settles on Hefer-Matic-Babe. Not great, but it has Hefer in it. He puts the cover over his cubes and slides them over to the wordmeister.
Joe picks Phat-Chunk-ism from his cubes and places the cover over them as well.
The best that Sam comes up with from his cubes is Dis-Jumbo-aholic, better than nothing.
Geoff has nothing, so he goes for humor and selects Super-Fuzz-Sauce.
Finally Mark selects Puff-In-Flex.
Tom, the wordmeister, mixes up all of the covers, then reveals and reads them one by one. This is where the most laughter comes in as you can make some pretty humorous words. He decides on Puffinflex and Mark wins the 
So as you can see, it is a pretty simple game, and it can be hilarious. It can actually get a bit randy with some of the combinations that can be made, so it might be more appropriate for the grown-up crowd. Phat-tang-jelly? Asian-bone-cream? You see what I mean. There was one combination that came out that had us rolling in laughter, but I can’t repeat it here. You’ll have to see for yourself.
So, a party game after a few drinks and it is hilarious, but if you are dining with Pastor Bill and his wife, or the Armenian ambassador, or your daughter’s Principal, you might want to be careful.
Even though there are 21 cubes, each with six word parts, and you select three cubes at random each time; after a few plays in a row it might get a little stale as you get to see many of the more humorous combinations. So I suggest playing Faux-Cabulary a couple of times, then putting it away until the next party.
I only wish they had included a few blank cubes that we could make up our own words parts on. Of course, it would probably head right for an NC-17 rating at that point.
The components are good. The words are printed on the cubes, not stickered on, so they will hold up well. The cube covers and card tray are a thin hard plastic similar to the plastic that box inserts are made of, so you might have to worry about splitting eventually. I wouldn’t leave them out in the sun. The cards are well done and of similar quality to other party games.
Overall, Faux-Cabulary is a fun game that led to some great bursts of laughter. It is short and very easy to understand. I liked it.
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